[tz] timezone DB distribution

Paul Gilmartin PaulGBoulder at AIM.com
Wed Aug 19 15:41:24 UTC 2020


On 2020-08-18, at 21:28:09, Guy Harris wrote:
> 
> On Aug 17, 2020, at 12:01 PM, Juergen Naeckel via wrote:
>> 
>> ...  However…
>> First of all, a tar.gz is Linux specific.
> 
> Or, rather, UN*X specific; Linux Torvalds was about 10 years old when tar was first broadly available (with V7 in 1979, I think), and gzip came out a little more than a year after somebody announced that they were "doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones", although it did support bash and gcc when that announcement was made. :-)
>  
".gz" is non-POSIX. z/OS UNIX doesn't supply a gzip or zip.  And Single UNIX
much prefers "pax" over "tar" nowadays.

> But...
> 
>> True, you could install additional Windows software.  But, that might not go well with customers of mine.  I think a ZIP would be acceptable for both worlds.
>  
I suspect WinZip is tar-savvy.  But is WinZip in base Windows?
(Cygwin rules!)

> ...offering both a tarball and a zipball might be a good idea (zip exists as a UN*X command, and ships with at least UN*Xes, but UN*X users may be less used to it).
> 
Again, non-POSIX, but distributed with (most) Linux.  Various zip
software may differ in treatment of symlinks and directory links.
Info-ZIP for example, expands links unless an option is supplied.

- gil



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